Sky Gidge

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    “SOMETIMES people don’t care about the music as much as they care about white skin and blond hair,” Daniel de la Huerta said. “It’s a frustrating reality in Shenzhen.”

    De la Huerta, from the United States, is a musician working in Shenzhen, and he sometimes faces a problem: the color of his skin.

    A Mexican-American with Portuguese ancestry, his skin sometimes isn’t light enough for the business owners that hire foreign musicians to perform in clubs, hotels and at business events.

    “They usually ask for pictures,” he said. “One time they even sent back a group of white, blond-haired men — saying ‘we want this.’”

    In the eyes of many Chinese, the lighter the skin, the better.

    A walk down the skin-care products isle in a Chinese supermarket illustrates the point. Many skin moisturizers in the country boast that they will also lighten skin. Wedding pictures are often photoshopped to lighten the skin of newlyweds, and even a passport photo will sometimes be changed to make the skin whiter.

    On the surface, it looks like racism. But it isn’t that simple, explains Sean Weisbrot, 29, from the United States.

    Weisbrot has been in China for seven years and provides Shenzhen government officials with training about Western culture.

    “People with whiter skin are assumed to be more wealthy and affluent because they have the luxury of not working in the field (as farmers),” said Weisbrot, explaining that farmers would have dark, rough skin.

    So the preference is partly rooted in a history where the social class of a person could be told by how white their skin was.

    “The other assumption is that white skin is naturally more beautiful,” he said.

    Weisbrot said that a white-skinned performer gives a venue more “face,” or makes the venue look better.

    “It’s purely innocent beliefs that get generalized and spread out and appear racist,” said Weisbrot.

    Racist or not, looks sell. Vicky Yang, 27, is the founder of Vicki Media, a company which connects actors, models and musicians with Chinese employers. She said that performers with white skin are especially popular.

    “We have to be sure they are at least decent or presentable to attract a crowd. Sounds shallow, but that’s the truth,” she said. “If you are very talented, but ugly, can we sell you?”